I knew nothing about this movie going into watching it, and that was how i wanted it (I hate when people ruin everything that happens in a movie before I have a chance to see it). All I knew is that this movie has something to do with kids, and that it came highly recommended by some of my Twitter friends. I like horror movies with creepy kids. There's something about corruption of the innocents that gets under my skin, so movies where kids get hurt or where kids do the hurting really hits me pretty hard, so I was steeling myself first before watching this, unsure of how it would affect me.
This is about four children playing together in the Nordic summer who, apart from the prying eyes of adults, discover that they have mysterious powers. Being children, they are intrigued by their newfound abilities, and they start testing them out in the woods surrounding their homes. As time goes on, the games they play become increasingly dangerous. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, there's no way to stop these powers from corrupting these kids, and no way to tell if they can be stopped before it's too late.
"Stephanie" is a movie I watched for the challenge a few years ago that explored how dangerous it could be if small children suddenly got dangerous powers. "Chronicle" is a found footage type horror flick that explores what would happen if some ordinary teenagers suddenly got special powers, so this idea has been explored before in film and I was intrigued to see how it would play out in this film. One of the characters, a little girl, has a mentally handicapped sister, and I was interested to see what the filmmakers would do with her character. At first the kids just play together like normal kids (though one of them is disturbed and kind of scary) but once they discover their powers they start playing around with them and see what they can do, which starts innocently enough but eventually gets out of hand.
This movie would have been like five minutes long if these people had watched their kids better. The main character, Ida, is the one with the mentally handicapped sister Anna, and her parents tend to forget they have two children, paying WAY more attention to Anna than they do Ida, and it pisses me off. One of the kids has an abusive mom and another has a mom who is just inattentive like Ida's mom, and I can't help but feel that the movie wouldn't have been able to happen without the help of bad parenting.
Imagine if the kids from Lord of the Flies had powers to move objects and control people's minds and make them hurt themselves and others, that's this movie, only they're not deserted on an island somewhere, they're in a city in a big apartment complex with people all around them, and the adults are clueless as to what their kids can do. Ignorance is dangerous. I always wanted a big family, but movies like this make me glad I don't have kids.
I really feel for Ida in this movie. She's basically had to raise herself because her parents are occupied with their older daughter. I get that Anna needs more help than other kids, but they still seem to neglect Ida to take care of her sister, and they don't even bother to ask her what's wrong and REALLY take the time to listen even after increasingly fucked up things start happening. I just wish they'd done more, but that's the scariest thing about this movie, if it happened with your kids you can't guarantee you would notice what was happening either until it was too late. Poor Ida has to fend for herself against an evil no one can really see, and people wouldn't believe her even if she did tell them. This movie ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable level and then lets it sit there, taunting us. There's a climactic scene that is great because there's a whole playground full of witnesses but no one even knows anything is going on except for three little kids that look so innocent you'd never suspect that evil lurks just below the surface. This was really a great movie and the child actors did an AMAZING job at their roles. it's a slow burn if ever I saw one and it's probably not for everyone, but for my money, it might be the best movie I've watched so far this year.
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